Collaborative idea generation for ELT

Recently the British television channel Channel 4 created a programme called ‘Make Bradford British‘. It has had very mixed reviews and prompted a lot of debate about multiculturalism, as well as looking at the controversial Citizenship test which those wanting to settle permanently in the UK or claim British citizenship must pass.

On one page of the accompanying website they published a word cloud of tweets shared under the hashtag #MakesYouBritish. This is a screen capture of the results as I write this (the map is updated every minute):

Sam Shepherd tweeted the link to the website and suggested using it in class, which makes it perfect as an Infinite ELT Ideas prompt.

What would you do with these words in your classroom? You can make any assumptions you like about the context they are used in. Post your ideas in the comments below. All ideas are welcome (there are no wrong answers!)

I think this prompt could lead to a very touchy but interesting discussion on ‘identity’..immigration and patriotism..something my SS in Greece do not cope with very well but should be addressed. a lesson for crossing cultural borders….thanks so much for an intrigiung subject! Plus. I loved it as most of my SS think the UK is all red buses, fish and chips and very (white) English -an eye opener indeed!

I can see a couple of ideas.
1. What could be true of your country from this list? How “British are they?”
2. What would you include in the word cloud for your country?
In a monolingual classroom you could even get students (and their friends?) to tweet (if they do) what makes their country their country and make a word cloud with that.

!. Show word cloud – students describe what they see.
2. Give background to flag’s creation.
3. Students choose word/words from flag and speculate on how they are connected to Britishness.
4. What words would be on your country’s flag/word cloud?
5. Refer to citizenship test – what questions do you think are on the test?
6. Go to Guardian article: http://www.theguardian.com/uk/quiz/2013/jan/27/british-citizenship-test-quiz-new Are they the same?
7. What questions would your country’s citizenship test have?
8. Role play citizenship test – home office official/migrant

#eltpics

#eltpics is a collection of photos, based on a weekly theme, taken by ELT teachers, trainers and writers from around the world.
These are, in turn, available free to others in the field of ELT under a CC license to use in their classroom and on their non-commercial materials.
Anyone interested in joining in can tweet an image with the hashtag #eltpics, and it will then be added to the #eltpics Flickr group.
For a more detailed explanation of how to join in, please see this post.
For ideas on how to use some of the photos, visit the eltpics blog.
You can see the last 10 photos uploaded to the site below: